The PC graphics and gaming worlds received a glimpse of their future today when Nvidia and Microsoft jointly demonstrated the new DirectX 12 (DX12) at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.

According to an Nvidia blog post about DX12, it and the new Direct3D API it introduces make it easier for developers to directly control hardware resources and therefore achieve higher performance from systems using multi-core processors. The current standard, DX11, which was unveiled in 2008, can have trouble delivering superior performance because single-threaded applications may be gated by power limits, and even multi-core CPUs can deliver less speed than many GPUs.

This has necessitated, the post continues, "an API that scales similarly with core count." Nvidia also said that DX12 will help developers take advantage of the advanced features of newer video cards.

A Microsoft blog post about DX12 described these features as including descriptor heaps and tables, which let the GPU "write the hardware-native resource description ... to memory up-front," as well as concise pipeline state objects, which speeds up the conversion of PSOs into the required hardware native instructions and reduces draw call overhead, and command lists, which give the driver all the information it needs to pre-compute necessary GPU commands and bundles, which are similar to command lists but may be reused.

At the GDC event, Microsoft showed off a tech demo of the upcoming Forza Motorsport 5 game, running on a PC equipped with the Nvidia GeForce Titan Black video card. Microsoft claimed in its blog post that the "photorealistic racing experience" was possible because Direct3D 12 made console-like efficiency possible.

Though no specific time frame has yet been provided for the DX12 launch, one especially tantalizing tidbit was let loose: Microsoft estimated that more than 80 percent of currently on-sale gaming PCs will support the technology. Nvidia also said that it will support DX12 on all DX11-class GPUs, and AMD announced separately that DX12 will be available on all of its Radeon GPUs that use the Graphics Core Next architecture.

This marks one of the first times—if not the first time—that a DirectX upgrade has not required users to install new graphics hardware.

DX12, however, will not be confined just to just desktops and laptops, according to the principal players. It will also make its way to smartphones, tablets, and the Xbox One. That also signifies a major sea change in the way cross-device compatibility is viewed in an era in which traditional PCs are not the only players in the game.

Microsoft predicted that games utilizing DX12 are expected to be released in time for the 2015 holiday season.

About the Author

Matthew Murray got his humble start leading a technology-sensitive life in elementary school, where he struggled to satisfy his ravenous hunger for computers, computer games, and writing book reports in Integer BASIC. He earned his B.A. in Dramatic Writing at Western Washington University, where he also minored in Web design and German. He has been... See Full Bio

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